Designers and Developers in Atlanta

Avoiding Hosting Company Headaches

2008-12-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

I have to admit after years of hosting clients there is nothing worse than a Saturday afternoon telephone spasm. When you have a few hundred shared accounts on a server and that server goes down expect to spend a good amount of time on the phone letting clients know you will have their site up as soon as possible. Emotions will range from angry and frustrated to "hey is our site down, I'm not sure if it's my browser or not?". Years ago I would sweat like a pig for the next 1-6 hours depending on what the problem with the server was. Living in fear like this is not the way to live. At The Atlanta Hosting Company, hosting is not even our bread and butter but it keeps clients under our wing and helps maintain re-occurring business. Finding a good cost effective solution to avoid downtime should not be a hard task but when moving accounts, email and settings over to a new server solution you can expect major problems if you aren’t prepared. When starting out being a reseller is ok but you are putting a great deal of trust into your provider’s hands. If you are spending most of your time being a web design company you definatly don't want to get stuck sitting on hours of support calls.

When I was using a web hosting reseller I ran into one of the hardest longest weeks of my life moving account after account to the hosting solution that is now running our websites today. I knew I needed to get out and I was the largest account this reseller had in the process he did not make this an easy transition for me or my clients. He was completely angry with me for starting to move accounts to these new servers without telling him and in the process things locked up and started to not copy over correctly. There could have been a legal battle there could have been blood, I don't know if I'm just a softy or not but in the last eight years I have not had any legal issues with clients or vendors and I would like to keep it that way. I guess there is a first time for everyone and mine might be coming down the pipe. Now I feel much safer with the way we have setup and organized our hosting process. Don't get me wrong we have had some down time, but when it does happen we have a great off location support team that sits on our servers 24/7.

The learning curve was a little steep and we spent a few long weekends working out billing issues and software conflicts but overall now this company has a piece of mind. If you currently have 50 or more small business clients and maybe a few larger budget clients, I recommend getting your first dedicated server through the planet. The planet is one of the largest hosting providers on the planet and they watch our dedicated servers while we sleep. Getting Cpanel, WHMCS billing and Apache server running was a headache but made a huge difference in the long run.

I have not used many billing systems but I really like WHMCS it integrates into the WHM control panel and allows clients pay their bill, upgrade their service or purchase other products. WHMCS automates reminders, support tickets and even domain renewals. It has many features that can be tweaked to your preferences. Once it is installed you no longer have to use WHM to create your accounts all plans, services and products can be setup from the billing system.

Happy Hosting..

Building A Web Design Company From The Ground Up

2008-09-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Building A Web Design Company From
The Ground Up - Things to research before you get started.

Hi my name is Markus Nelson I live in Atlanta Georgia with my Wife and daughter Ashley and Saturday. I have been running a web design and development company( bluelightlabs.com ) for over 8 years. Before I lived up the North Georgia Mountains for quite some time where there was not a great local market. I went to collage in Savannah Georgia for computer animation and found that it was not my calling in the ( Making a living world ), unless I was to work for a company and give up my quest for entrepreneurship and personal freedom.

Let me get this straight off the bat, ( Don't do this!!) and what i mean by ( Don't do This!! ) it is not easy, it is defiantly not a get rich quick way to build a company. I am 33 years old now and can't even begin to tell you the amount of energy, stress and dedication it takes to make a company work. There are so many things I should have known earlier before I jumped into this endeavor and it is these things that motivated me to write this article. I am not the best author for sure, but I hope this information helps other people that are interested in building a web design company find it more tangible. There is also a great deal of stuff I want to share with fellow entrepreneurs that will hopefully provide a great head start to succeeding in this market.

I have broke this article down into a few small sections, these are the areas that have been the most important to me in the success with business. If any readers have any questions or comments feel free to contact me from our website at http://www.bluelightlabs.com/contact/

I will be more than happy to respond on any questions or comments regarding this article. On a note I am not the most grammatically correct person so if you find any mistakes save yourself some time - I already know my weaknesses and don't need to be reminded of them anymore. I have a small blog I started that has other information similar to this article; you can check it out at http://www.atlantawebdesign.blogspot.com.

Ok now that we have that out of the way - here is the breakdown.

It all boils down to research -

Well this a topic that really gets to me, I never really did much research to start with and wish I did from the very beginning. Heads up - you can never do enough research. I cannot tell you how important research is. If I had done more research I would be miles ahead of myself and my company would be stronger to this day.

I know this is a broad term but it is an important one none the less. I started by doing the only research I did at my first Job. I was part of a small IT department working for my dad's company. I was working and living with a co-worker that was an anal overachiever that made my life miserable. Since he was always on top of stuff before I could even get to the scene I spent a good amount of time in my cubicle surfing other web design company websites looking for ideas onhow to create my own little niche business. I literally spent a great deal of my employer’s money just getting prepared to start my own company. Everything from our original logo to the first official search engine submission of my website in 2000 was done from my little cubical without a window.

Our proposal has gone through many different renditions but going out of your way to actually request a proposal from a competitor is a great way to start building your own. The proposal is a huge piece of your company; you will use it over and over and make many versions of it so remember to spend a great deal of time researching and looking at other competitor examples. When the phone starts ringing at least 70% percent of the time, possible clients are looking
for not only a price quote but also an idea of how your company presents itself. Presentation is a huge part of what you want to research how you present your company will attract certain types of clients so think about the type of client you want to attract. For example, do you want to dive straight in and go after fortune 500 companies with huge budgets or do you want to target small to medium local businesses. Blue Light Labs after 8 years is now starting to make this next step toward going after the larger company contracts. What I love about large company contracts are you don't need as many and you don't feel like you are juggling your time with a great deal of small ones. Of course attracting these types of organizations is not an easy issue. Blue Light Labs has built hundreds of websites but I feel only 10-30 of them are worth putting into a portfolio to attract larger more serious organizations. This does not mean that the other websites we built are not portfolio worthy but what it does mean is you only get a limited period of time to hook a potential client on your website so be specific on how you want to show the quality of your work.

Research is a good way of avoiding making mistakes that can bite you in the ass later down the line. The first thing I did was find a good local book keeping company to officially take care of my taxes these companies can typically take care of everything you need such as incorporation, taxes and write-offs. I cannot tell you how important it is to get one that works well with small businesses I used BBS in Marietta, Georgia and they are worth every penny. You don't want

to waist your time trying to do all this legal stuff yourself, unless you are into that type of thing. It is money well spent in my opinion. I would recommend looking and interviewing a few before choosing the one that will work for your web design company.

Vertical markets are markets in witch you can target more intensely. Lets say you want to go after Real Estate Related companies or you want to primarily design and develop e commerce websites. Finding a vertical market that is in demand is a great way to get an idea of how you want to present your company to either a local market or a national or international market. In conclusion as much as I could keep going on and on about researching different ways and angles to approach your building your companies foundation though research this is a short list of what I would recommend are the most important.

Incorporation:

What type of web site design firm do you want to become. Are you a one man show, or do you want to put together a team? Find out what types of incorporation will work the best for your goals. Becoming a LLC vs. a C or an S corporation gives you different options and tax breaks. Your company name and it's domain name will stick with you thought the life of your company so give it a good amount of thought. Eventually your company name will start to become a way to market yourself with word of mouth or visual representation, so take it seriously.

Vertical Markets

What do you think are your strengths and weaknesses and what types of clients do you want to attract? How do you want to present your company when you do manage to get exposure and traffic to your website?

Other money outlets

On top of designing websites what other ways can you make money with your services. Do you want to offer Hosting, Internet Marketing or resell ecommerce gateway and domain services? I have to tell you Blue Light Labs would not survive if I did not get into the hosting business.
Hosting allowed for me to have a recurring source of revenue during slow months where we where focusing on improving internal company issues.

Do you have any startup capitol? What are the best ways to use it? I only had $200 dollars in my pocket when I started, so I didn't have much to work with. It is so easy to get too exited and spend a ton of money software, hardware, marketing, office space printed material ext. If you don't have a great deal of money browse though things like gorilla marketing blogs or books, find a good hosting provider to work with that will give you a flexible reseller account.

Drive!!

You have to have drive; drive is the one thing that most successful entrepreneurs have. You have to be driven you have to work hard and you have to keep up with your competition. If you are not a driven individual stop reading this and forget it. Believe me there is no easy way into this business. It is competitive hard and requires many hours of dedication and hard work. The pay off is amazing though, in my opinion having a 4 man company that has almost hit the one million dollar mark this year is a huge achievement and something I am proud of. I don't personally make a great deal of money, most of it goes back into the company or toward all the dept I occurred while struggling when I started it.

Think Big

Try not to get too comfortable stay on top of your technology, competition and all the constant changing aspects of your deliverables.

People

If you are planning on building a team people are obviously important. One the biggest things I pride myself on is my team. I was not afraid to brush up mycompetition because my competition became my company. I spent a great deal of time meeting other web designers and developers and building relationships with other entrepreneurs like me. All this social networking naturally allowed me to build a team that was perfect for Blue Light Labs. Travis Christopher and David Warren from liquidsquidstudios.com became our sales and design department, David Hunt from Webuddha.com and Holodyn.com became our development and research department and finally I just slipped into what was naturally my strength the marketing and project management department. Are you getting the picture?

Just remember to keep patent and focus during your startup, business will come with quality work and dedication to your clientele.

Surround yourself with people smarter than you and learn from it, keep yourself open to change and new technologies, and for god sake enjoy what you do..

Markus Nelson...

Follow markusnelson at http://twitter.com

Mastering The website development and design process:

2008-05-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

The processes that a company defines are the most important elements of your company’s success. The definition phase of a project is the most important element of building a great web site. When I first started writing proposals and meeting with clients it was a nightmare. It was not until I really took a step back and looked at the requirements and needs of the client from the very beginning that the transition became smoother. When starting Blue Light Labs in 2000 we where undercharging and overselling our services in a desperate attempt to stay in business. It took me 5 years to iron out the kinks in our web design company’s business model. After spending time with other Atlanta web design companies and comparing and contrasting notes, our proposals and processes have matured. These concepts allowed our business to grow while providing a quality service that we are proud of. Here are a few ideas I have on improving your web development company’s process and approach to customers.

Read More

Blue Light Labs takes the quality road to ecommerce and content managment

2008-04-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

One of our primary things we keep struggling with at this firm is educating the client on the quality of our services. The web design / development industry has had way too many chiefs and not enough engines. What I mean is our products and services are geared toward a niche that speaks pure quality and customization. Being underbid by companies that slap these products together with duck tape has really hurt us. Our dedication to each product is what we live for but firms that underbid and slap a quick and dirty product together destroy our vision in this market. Educating each prospect on the differences between services we are bidding on is something that has been hard to communicate. Great portfolios, testimonials and referrals work great but it has not been enough to distinguish us from our competition. I was just looking at the Andy Bounds article and media on your site and was moved by the idea of tweaking and mastering the art of the presentation and the pitch. After a great deal of trial and error on our part I feel that is a good aspect of sales we need to brush up on. Blue Light Labs is a small 5 man company that runs on its own fumes without venture capitol or loans we are responsible for our own survival every month. In many cases being a small company might be one of the aspects that larger quality prospects look at in terms of stability.

Imagining our business in 12 months from now ideally I would like to start nailing down at least 50% of our quality leads so My Team and Me can focus on quality professional work and stop underselling ourselves to get a bid. This way everyone wins which is what business should be more about! A healthy life comes with doing what you do best and getting results without driving yourself into the ground. Removing the struggle and frustration out of the air would be the best thing that could happen to us. Educating and communicating effectively with current clients as well as prospects I feel is the first step to our success.

Review our new development and design services press release

Joomla is one of the largest growing open source content management systems on the planet with a large web development community to support it.

Working local atlanta web design partners

2008-02-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

Building a compatible web design team from scratch is hard enough. Getting everyone in sync and working together properly has taken almost a year to organize.

So I ask myself, what is the best way to organize and build partner relationships that flow best for a website design and development company.

Any Companies interested in working with our network please feel free to contact us.

Here is a link to our current static posted newsletter.

Web Designers Working Together in Atlanta, GA